On Tuesday, August 15, 2017 at 11:38:27 PM UTC-4, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Mon, 14 Aug 2017 09:30:49 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

That I don't understand. What ballast were you walking on?

The ballast that holds the ties in place. It's coarser than gravel,
more uniform in size, and doesn't contain any fines. Around here, the
ballast extends for a considerable distance to each side of the
tracks.

In other words, it's the super-coarse gravel that holds up railroad tracks. In
my area, the rocks are almost the size of baseballs. Amazingly, I once saw
two guys riding it on road bikes or, more likely, "gravel bikes." They didn't
look like they were having much fun, though.

I've ridden a mountain bike on it, by dropping my air pressure to maybe 20 psi.
Ugly stuff, unless you're riding inside the train.

- Frank Krygowski